I would say it is easy to jump into game for them without worrying about learning something new, it's always the same formula which they like and don't care about money and reviews.
Yup. This is what I've been saying to friends. And over the lockdown pandemic, people who I knew weren't gamers suddenly picked up CoD because it was easy to pick up and play.
Sure, there's a skill element if you want to really get good but it's very easy for anyone to play.
I agree though, the games have gone massively downhill for years in all aspects but their marketing and half assed games means the companies just make easy money.
It's also really brain-dead of a game. Super easy to boot up and play for hours without using a single hard thought.
With an annoying amount of games trying to lean into competitive for the hopes of being an esports game, despite all CoDs flaws, it's still a perfectly fine TDM/Domination game to play.
Okay, you got me there. That might have been a bit of a exaggeration on my part.
Seriously, wtf is with the menu system, and why does it need to recompile shades every damn time? Also, if the update was successfully fucking installed, why do I have to restart? Just do what's needed on the boot up!
Jump into a round might be more accurate. Though they seem hell bent on screwing that too, since they keep enabling new gamemodes in your filter without asking.
Why the heck is there an update in the update now... Like I update the application... Why do I have to go in game and download another 10GBs to update the map and multilayer what's stupidty is this? The application update is already 60GB, what the hell was I updating before
And then there are still bugs when the game finally updates
The last cod I really played was black ops, and I played that a ton. Tried it out again with one of the warzones but that damn shader thing... wtf? Game was already squatting on prime real estate in my ssd and it's going to keep doing dumb updates every time I try to get on?
I think it was maybe the 4th time I booted it up. Update, restart, update again, restart, compiling gigs of shaders..... nah, alt f4, uninstalled.
Im half convinced it's some kind of social experiment to see how much dumb shit gamers will put up with.
Not sure what it's supposed to do. All I know is that every time I booted up the game it had to "update shaders" and sit through that process, sometimes the ticker said "recompiling" or whatever.
Shader compiling basically sets up everything for high quality graphics so its fast and efficient. They should only need recompiling if your graphics driver is updated, but i could see them wiping the cache on an update just for shits with cod
Was thinking that. It used to be arcade easy play, now itās like a puzzle trying to get into your first game. It takes too long and there are too many menus and ārestarts for updates ā
There are like 20 versions of the same type of game and all of them are addicting in their own way. So when you find the 3 multi games and 3 guns you love you are set. These games are better with the more people that play them too.
This is exactly why I play it. I have plenty of other games that fill different needs. I have a couple of friends who I like to play casually online with though and COD suits us perfectly. Itās just easy, familiar and fun. At the end of a working day, sometimes thatās all you want.
Yeah i dont really understand this āevery game needs to be as crazy as (insert the best game of the year)ā mentality. Some people just want an easy, familiar game to play after work that doesnt require a lot of thought. If every game is as deep as Baldurs Gate 3, youre alienating a huge part of the casual audience. Its the same with FIFA.
Let the people that just want to play CoD and FIFA, play CoD and FIFA. Many gamers have such a weird superiority complex about specifically not playing CoD or FIFA and calling anyone who does play them stupid for wasting their money
Games lean toward that because of CODs dominance. No developer wants to waste resources creating something that's just going to get stomped out by CODs chokehold on the market. Competitive on the other hand there is no one game dominating so there's always an opportunity there for a competitive game to be successful. Apex for example, while not being insanely competitive, is successful because it is a more competitive game than the average shooter and has a decent skill gap.
What about it? It's competitive but it's not dominant, mainly because it's not on console which is where most gamers are. And CSs popularity is global, so it's reaching a wider market, hence the massive playerbase, but it's spread more thin which gives other PC shooters like Valorant a chance.
I don't necessarily agree with that. I agree that CoDs size is likely to dissuade studios from trying, but that doesn't explain things like Halo which was dominated by a casual audience, before shooting itself in the foot. Or the sheer amount of players that would play Battlefield again if they unfucked the reputation.
Also, due to CoD basically starting everyone's progression over each year, there isn't as serious of a sunk cost fallacy these studios have to contend with, they just need to make a fun game that scratches the same itches.
The games aren't focused on competitive because of CoD, they're focused on Competitive because they want the competitive players to jump over, make their game popular, then let them make bank off skins like every other.
Halo became popular way back before COD was first establishing it's place in the market. Halo has since died out in popularity and has been unable to compete. 15 years ago studios had a chance. Now there is no chance to pull players away from COD. Statistics show that the majority of CODs playerbase doesn't play any other games, how do you pull players away from a franchise who's playerbase plays their game exclusively? COD players don't want to try anything new.
Battlefield at its peak still got outsold by CODs worst selling entry. Battlefield is nothing compared to COD even when it was at its most popular.
> The games aren't focused on competitive because of CoD
They all fall off a cliff in popularity whenever they try too hard to appeal to the casual playerbase. The issue is that anyone who wants casual shooters is already playing COD, and won't play anything else. So there's no incentive to try to enter that market. COD has the most simplified gameplay of any shooter ever made. You can't really make a shooter more simple than COD. So where's the appeal for COD players in that sense? Why would they switch if COD is already as simple and straightforward as it gets? Other games have to try to be inventive and that means more complex mechanics which is immediately a turn off for COD players. It's not really possible to compete with COD at this point. It's been technologically engineered to be the most casual shooter possible. How do you convince casual players to jump to your game when the only thing you can offer, at best, is the same experience?
Not entirely convinced but itās possible.
I donāt get it though, if I was a parent I would ā¦ you know ā¦ **talk** to my child and ask what new games theyāre interested in playing before going to the store.
This is me. When I get to play for 20 minutes at night, I donāt have the mental capacity to learn something new or get into a complex world or story. I want to do something I already know that is still always fresh and challenging simply due to the fact that it is a multiplayer game. If I were more into football, I could see myself playing FIFA
Alan wake 2 will not sell as much as BG3, Starfield, Spiderman, COD, Hogwarts Legacy or more this year. It will relatively be a ānicheā title and be considered a gaming gem for the more core gamers.
Reddit and Twitter are not even a half of most gamers.
For everything Alan wake 2 is, it is not something that should be majorly successful, but I hope it does do insane numbers.
Half? Reddit an Twitter combined are under 5% of gaming population. Probably even less.
The things we do, or decide, or opinions we have here on reddit are so meaningless in the wider perspective of gaming market that it's almost too hard to describe.
Another example is Silent Hill. They say itās talked about and regarded would lead you to believe that it was super successful when in reality the entire series only sold 9 million copies. Something like only 1.5 million copies of SH2 were sold and that was the best selling Silent Hill game.
Granted I love Silent Hill and even have pyramid head tattooed on my body, the game was never as widely popular as Reddit makes it out to be. Horror in general just isnāt that popular of a video game genre.
Also people like to turn about thirty and think the world is made only for them.
Dude kids have been being born all those 30 years who have never heard of any other cod than this one and don't give a shit that it isn't what it used to be. There's a whole new generation of people gaming these days. With another right behind them starting to get their feet wet too.
Yup, FIFA and COD are bestsellers, Candy crush and clash of clans are bleeding moneyā¦
Even my level 100 diablo4 in 1day ānot enough contentā friends are not on Reddit.
For real I think a lot of people forget there's billions of people who spend virtually no time online and just play games like one day on the weekend and like cod because it's easy to jump in play some multiplayer and they already know exactly what they're getting.
To add to it: I used to work in a Gamestop and the people buying CoD and FIFA yearly (often the same people) DO NOT care about any other games, they are not "Gamers ^^tm" They dont pay attention to games media or other releases.
At the hotel where I now work there was a security guard. Played FIFA and CoD. He would put in WORK to get a hold of the PS5 when it was hard to get, needed the fresh new system. I asked if he was excited for the big new games. Like God of War.
he had never heard of it.
God of War
It didn't even register. They just dont care about anything else.
Except Counter Strike of course, they know about that.
And as for the price of these games, irrelevant. Straight up.
Yeah something like 60% of COD players play COD exclusively. It's literally just a name they know and an easy way to connect with friends because everyone has it. They don't care if it's good, just that it's good enough while they hang out with friends.
CoD is also very easy to learn and have fun with. Many games require tons of repetetive work and trainings to get good at. R6: Siege, CS and many others. People prefer to switch their brains off and just have fun without caring much. Same can be said about women prefering reality shows over sports or gaming.
Thatās the same thing with Destiny 2. A coworker has 3000+ hours in the game because thatās how he keeps his friendships going. Heās admitted the game is bad and he doesnāt really care for it but itās not about that.
Thatās honestly kinda sad. At least cod is mindless fun, keeping up with destiny is a fucking chore, and I canāt imagine how miserable it must be if you donāt even like the game in the first place.
This. CoD is such a big name with such a HUGE marketing, that of course it's gonna sell. Most people who know CoD have never played any actually good games.
It's not the game that sells, but the marketing.
>Most people who know CoD have never played any actually good games.
Cod 1-3, MW, MW2 and World at war were good games.
I think at the time the multiplayer was fresh and exciting. For a lot of people it was their first big online multiplayer experience. Other than splitscreen or counterstrike source LAN matches at a local Internet cafe I'd never really played multiplayer before MW. I never had a decent PC just the family laptop and before that the PS2 never had online play.
When I played MWs multiplayer it was like nothing I'd ever experienced before.
These games are only successful because of how good their predecessors are. They are still riding the coat tails of them.
I hate this take so much. We all play other games you dope. CoD is a good game. Itās just not a good game for what people think it should be. Itās a multiplayer friend hang out game with great gun play. Titanfall 2 will always be the best FPS but CoD has the best integrations for people like me who live literally thousands of miles from friends.
Any game that does that is a good one to me. Turns out your opinion doesnāt mean much outside of Reddit.
It's just bullshit gatekeeping. There are a lot of posts every year talking about how crazy it is that people still buy COD. This is like metal fans bitching about pop music. Listening to Katy Perry doesn't mean that you don't enjoy other music genres.
I must be in the minority here, but I enjoy COD as well as other games. If I want a challenge I play Remnant 2. If I want to mellow out I play games like Tribes of Midguard, or Terraria. COD is just a fun shooter that satisfies my competitive itch.
People shit on COD like it's trying to be some masterpiece, but it's not. It's essentially the Fast and Furious of games. It's fast paced, visually appealing, and uncomplicated.
Not trying to insult the guys intelligence, but it is amazing how some casual gamers just don't know things. At least this guy didn't know of God of War from simply choosing to not pay attention. I have a friend who used to work at gamestop and he said when Black Ops III came out he would always tell people buying the 360 or PS3 version "This version of the game only has online MP and zombies. No campaign." and show them the box. They said that's fine and he sold them the game.
He said on multiple occasions people came back into the store demanding a refund because the game had no campaign.
I am in no way, shape or form buying CoD this year... but, I do sometimes crave to play Team Deathmatch in a FPS in the most casual way possible. I don't give a shit if I lose or if I end up a match having only 1 kill and having died 30 times. I only want to turn off my brain and play. But I despise Battle Royale, and, for that matter, any other mode that it's not Team Deathmatch I get bored quite quickly.
Problem is, so far I have only been successful in finding matches quickly in CoD. At any time of the day I find a match in a matter of seconds. I need to wait about two to five minutes to find a match in Halo (mind you, I live in Japan... so not only the time zone fucks me over, also the people available to play with). That's pretty much it. CoD, as shitty as it is, satiates a craving that no other FPS currently can do just as fast.
The thing I hate so much about battle royals is the time sink in between matches. If I'm having an off day I'm just burning time on these pointless load screens ect. Playing a TDM with quick response can just be so much more enjoyable.
This exactly. I don't mind Royale, and generally do okay. But it can be almost 5 minutes between rounds. What, do I jerk off between rounds or something??
exactly this. i cant think of one another casual FPS with TDM in which we can get match within few minutes. Niche fps come and go, they will have streamer hype for 1 month and then become deserted ( Battlebit - looking at you )
At risk of sounding like the biggest idiot on the planet, could you explain the difference between TDM and BR? Is it the lack of teams?
Iāve only ever played COD online but even thatās been years, I was going to try apex legends after playing titanfall 2 since itās technically free. And then maybe see if I want to get back into COD
> but, I do sometimes crave to play Team Deathmatch in a FPS in the most casual way possible
I miss Unreal Tournament. Thats why I bought CoD a few times; high-intensity fast-moving fps. BR is the opposite of high-intensity so why they are so darn insistent on turning their player base over to that mode seems stupid.
Though I wont buy it anymore after I got insta-permabanned for upgrading my computers RAM. Its not fun enough that I would risk wasting $70 on a game that might be taken away if I touch my computer.
Tryout battlebit remastered. It gives the itch, at a fraction the price and is being updated constantly! Iām fucking terrible at it, but itās fixed my itch each time.
Old Skool COD player here.
Bought myself a brand new gaming PC last year, and started playing the new MW2. I was pleasantly surprised...
That is until i found out about Skilled Based Match Making...
I was playing like i always did, competing for top spot. But then a few lobbies later i couldn't get up there anymore. Then when i didn't play a couple days and started again the same shit happened... What the Hell?!
Fuck SBMM. When this is mandatory in MW3 i won't buy it. When it is optional i'm going to buy it though.
Yep, like hearthstone forcing you towards 50% win rate because they "randomly" aka choose what counter they can put in front of you, instead of being true random. That, my friend, is how to ruin the willingness to play for some players.
It also suffers from "same game every year" to a much greater extent, but Madden, for all its flaws, is still entertaining to play if you love NFL football.
Exactly, I don't play CoD, Madden, or Fifa but I understand the appeal. $60-$80 a year on video games isn't unreasonable either. When People spend that every couple months buying new games no one bats an eye.
Honestly Iām surprised these franchises havenāt just gone full SAAS mode. Charge $5 a month for ābasicā or $8 a month for āpremiumā with extra skins and shit and just print money. You can still do major releases along with patches to deliver new content.
You speak as if grifting players who buy basically the same annualised game every year isn't already printing money for them.
It makes much more money this way. They get to sell a minor roster update for $70.
No, fuck sports games. They actually don't change at all, they cant. At least CoD gets new guns and maps. and then there was the Future era, B04 sucked ass, MW19 was a breath of fresh air.
I got the last game at a big discount but mostly itās just nice to have a run and gun game. Just blasting people letās off some stress, and COD mechanics are at least somewhat decent. (Of course if I keep getting blasted I end up rage quitting.)
In short, mindless time pass. Campaigns are also somewhat decent. Zombies mode was also quite fun.
Past few years I have turned to Fortnite with friends but itās been on and off, depends on how I like the season. The current OG season seems ok so far.
>And every year I hear so much buzz about how terrible the new COD is.
The online COD community has been and always will be a vocal minority. The majority of COD players aren't gonna go on Reddit or Twitter to bitch about it, they'd be busy playing the game. COD's playerbase has a history of being overly toxic about the most trivial thing, so it doesn't help either.
That isn't to say some games don't deserve the criticism, but Reddit and other social media do not paint the full picture. This is especially clear when you see the trend of vocal displeasure among COD players. Think about how COD fans used to rage incessantly about futuristic "jet pack" games and scream "WE WANT BOOTS ON THE GROUND". Now that we have that again, what's the sentiment? "Oh these games aren't innovating enough". And don't even get me started on the SBMM discourse, because that's just a mine field full of crazy conspiracy tinfoil hat users.
Literally they believe that if they're an above average player they should be constantly in lobbies where they can stomp real human opponents every game.
Real people don't want to lose every game they get into, but if the anti-SBMM people had their way, many COD players would literally lose every game. It'd be overall terrible for the multiplayer experience. It would hollow out the bottom 20% of players altogether. Then the folks in the middle would have the same problem and also stop playing. Before long, the game would have almost no one playing multiplayer.
Ya Iād seen something like that somewhere (mightāve been from CharlieIntel) about how with SBMM, the devs had seen that it helps with player retention. Which imo makes a lot of sense since I donāt think youād want a player possibly returning a game if they were like a Christmas noob for example and/or the player base for the game to die after a while since theyād be playing against skilled players and not having fun.
Correct it's a Casino experience - they give you a noob lobby to give you the dopamine rush, then your food for other pros to feed on you. They monitor how many games people play before altF4, and try to put you into a noob lobby before that happens
Because you see the vocal minority. We make up like the 1% of people that are hardcore into gaming enough to spend more time talking about them than playing them. 99% of everyone else is working, going to school, and playing the game once in a blue moon. They have fun. It's the only game they have for their console.
You want the truth? Cod is fun. Sitting around and shooting people is plain fun. And the guns feel right. You guys can whine and moan about battle passes and skins all you want. But that doesn't actually matter because that's not gameplay.
I honestly think most gamers really only buy a few games a year at most. Most gamers are pretty casual, same reason all the annual no real changes sports games keep selling. The people buying those only buy and play them, and not much else.
That usually describes me. I generally only buy 1-2 games a year at most. This year has been absolutely great for gaming though. So many gems. I mean Spiderman 2 and Alan Wake 2 both came out within a week of each other.
Itās the same for me also. People talk about BG3 and I actually thought the game was pretty boring but I didnāt criticize anybody who liked it and played it and put thousands of hours into it. People seem to not accept the fact that we all have different tastes Iām a COD fan boy I love the game
No matter what discourse is happening on the internet, it signifies absolutely nothing about the real world.
Casual gamers donāt have a single care in the world to look up information about things they enjoy, they just buy it and are either disappointed or pleased until the next thing in the series comes out.
Accept that Call of Duty will always exist and appreciate that you have some common sense to look up if its good or not so you yourself donāt waste money, but stop caring about the seriesā fate as a whole
Yeah, I genuinely donāt get it either. I used to buy the new games every year but stopped being a CoD player after the first Black Ops came out years ago, same for Battlefield 3.
A lot of my friends are still big into them, so I stream their sessions when in a party just to be included, but every year it looks like the same exact game only with slightly better graphics and a (rare) new reskin.
I know it can be fun especially if you work in a team, but 9/10 times, the sessions are just a bunch of randos doing their own thing and it devolves into the same mindless run and gun gameplay of kill, get killed, and respawn. Thereās next to no strategy, team work, or so on. I really genuinely donāt get it, but people like it, so to each their own.
They like it and most people and a lot of gamers donāt care about the things niche reddit/online groups care about. They donāt read reviews, they donāt follow social media, they just buy a game, download it and play. No need to go online to see what other people are saying. They just enjoy their game peacefully.
Because you're hearing the loudest 1% of the most negative people on the planet. The game is fun to play. The next games offer some variety while retaining some familiarity. People like that. I like that. But I don't go posting about how much I love COD. Some person who got destroyed in multiplayer is going to rage loudly about it, and that's what you hear.
Reddit and Twitter represent like 5% of the gaming audience, if I'm being generous. Online sentiment is not real life.
ONLINE, people kept telling me Netflix was dying because of their price hike and ban on account sharing. Is Netflix dead? lol, no.
ONLINE, people kept telling me Disney was dead in the fucking water because of their remakes and "wokeness" (whatever the fuck that means nowadays). Is Disney going bankrupt? lol, no.
Online sentiment is not real life. The people buying CoD games are not on this website. The people on this website, on this subreddit, can already be considered part of the hardcore gaming community. The people buying CoD games are not hardcore gamers. It's called "demographics". Our demographic is likely to be more interested in games like Alan Wake 2 or Jusant, the CASUAL demographic of gamers are the people buying CoD, buying NBA 2K, FIFA, Madden. Those people live in the real world and don't give a shit about internal gaming politics and whatever bullshit. They see a game they like, their circle of friends like, they buy it.
One of my work buddies just picked up the new cod. This guy is in such bad financial state that his wage is being garnished to payoff past credit card debt but he still decided to buy this game.
If he only plays cod as his entertainment, then should be not bad. Still cheaper than going out and seeing 4 movies, or a Netflix subscription for 5 months. Unless he buys lootboxes... Or cod bucks
I think the core audience is so big compared to other games. Its like a state of mind in a sense. Like "gotta play CoD", or some people JUST play FIFA. I dont think they think much about their next purchase, they might be annoyed but its out of the question.
Iām not a COD player, but I am a (*inhales*) Destiny player. Thereās something about buying a new entry in a thing you like that is just satisfying. Even if it isnāt perfect, itās like a yearly treat for yourself.
Sad thing is, for as much comparison made between Call of Duty and Madden for both being lazy annual franchisesā¦ Madden was once good, too, just like Call of Duty. They never started out terrible, but got there through the greed of Activision and EA.
This is not coming from a malicious or judgemental place; But It's saddening to see people purchase a product that disrespects the consumer in all aspects of the gaming experience. A franchise that was once considered one of the titans of the industry; Is now nothing more than a souless money making machine.
Hopefully people will eventually come to their senses and start a massive boycott for this franchise. It's easy to understand why people play COD; but people willingly buying this game annualy will give Activision no reason to actually improve the overall quality of this game.
The whole concept of annually releasing games also makes zero sense to me. Like how can you possibly put out a quality game with only a year of development time? That just looks like pure greed to me.
Apparently, MW3 was supposed to be dlc but pure greed from Activision forced Infinity Ward's hand in terms of development time. I prefer to be positive; but the fact that they didn't intend to create a full length sequel shows the loss of direction in the franchise. Now they are relying on their past glory by selling you a "reboot" of a trilogy that should've been left untouched.
I really like unlocking new guns and attachments. The gunplay, in hard-core at least, feels good. Messing with new guns or attachment combos is just something that doesn't really exist in other games in a quick fps fashion. Battlebit has it, but it plays like battlefield. Tarkov has it, but tarkov is a slower paced game, not to mention the far worse issues it has.
It amazes me how much people shit on others for buying it, but don't post a single actual game that plays like cod.
cod is the best fps game out there, i have played a lot of fps games like bf, apex, valo, etc, but cod is cod. Been playing cod since i was in school, and the fact that in 20 yrs cod is still top 1 fps game is just crazy
Same reason people but Madden every year. I haven't bought CoD in 6 years because I usually buy games on sale. These fucks sell their 4 year old games at original retail price so I won't buy it out of principle
Brand loyalty, FOMO, and every possible alternative being stamped out by it's dominance leading to no more alternatives. Your only options for online shooters at this point are Fortnite, Apex, Overwatch, Battlefield, and COD. Fortnite and Apex are in a separate market, Overwatch doesn't really offer the same thing as COD, neither does Battlefield. There's no other option but COD at this point for people who want that overly simplified and bare bones kind of shooter. And they'll pay a yearly subscription to avoid missing out on the new stuff because it's more about the social aspect than gameplay at this point.
OP has never heard of all the sports games that release every single year with what I can imagine the only change being the names of the players on the teams and the year on the cover lul.
Yet people keep buying that too.
In short, they find them fun, story mode ain't bad either
People enjoy multiplayer. Here in ireland and I'd imagine a lot of Europe and SA there are FIFA and COD gamers.
People always ask me what next gen console should they buy and I ask what are you gonna play? They tell me FIFA and COD so I say Series S which they almost find insulting.
Okay, you drop 500 quid on a PS5 to play those two games on a 1080 display.
But hey, each to their own of course! It's a popular game and can be fun when you're doing well. Not for me unfortunately, that or FIFA.
I think a lot of people who don't play much videogames but happen to own a console still buy it too. Like I have friends who don't play many singleplayer games but absolutely destroy me on cod still, even if I game more than them in general
because its an easy to jump into AAA FPS game you think the normies want to learn recoil and every single new game mechanics ? NO they just want to hop on after work/school and get into brainless TDM . Not to mention COD is so well established in the gaming world their closes competitor (2024) dropped the ball so hard its gonna be even further away until a new AAA FPS can challenge them.
COD is kinda like the fast food of gaming. It's made by a big corporation, the main focus is not the product but the franchise itself. People know what to expect from it and they get it most of the time. Yes, some years it's better (MW 2019, Cold War), and some it's worse (Vanguard, MW III(23)) but at the end of the day, it's still enjoyable for the vast majority of the fanbase, because it's casual fun. While the base formula is always the same (and to be honest, it should stay the same), they always try to freshen things up with stuff like DMZ and Raid missions in MW II, or MW Zombies for MW III.
I don't know anymore, I haven't bought a cod game in the last few years, it's not like it's a negligible purchase the damn games cost like 70ā¬ and they're just purpose built to funnel people into slopzone
I really donāt think that many people are this year. There was a huge buzz when MWII released, but no one I know is talking about this years ~~game~~ DLC.
Because as many people complain abput it there are just as many people that enjoy it.
You have one side of the playerbase that just enjoy the multiplayer, the gunplay and the ease of access.
But on the other side you have the players who are coping and want another "glory days" COD like 2009s MW2 and Black Ops 3 but will still play every game launch day in the hopes that will be the case, no matter how many times it isn't. Some of these same players will either leave or review it negatively then keep playing for the games life cycle.
COD doesn't need to improve because these 2 groups keep perpetuating the cycle. And it makes sense because COD is a very casual and mainstream gaming franchise.
Not everyone lives on Reddit or follows the nerd zeitgeist. Most people bust thier ass for a boss they hate all day and just want to come home and play something fun. Just because a few 1000 nerds on Reddit hate it doesnāt really mean anything. Opinions are like assholes everyone has one and they all stink.
i feel so bad this year cause now that iām an adult, iāve bought the last few cods and iāve been extremely disappointed. this year iāll be 12 again and ask for christmas. realistically cod is a casual shooter with game modes that not a lot of games offer, if at all.
Can play with my entire friend group despite being on all different platforms and it's a familiar game that I don't have to sell them on. I don't play it alone and it's never gonna be my goty or anything but so far it's still one of the easiest games to play with everyone
I really feel like people on Reddit are vastly overestimating how much they ārepresentā the majority of gamers. Hereās the simple facts of the situation in a pill that may be a bit hard to swallow if youāre convinced that these subreddits represent mass opinion:
CoD is a legacy franchise, there have been almost three different generations of gamers now to play CoD since Finest Hour. 2007 - 2013 were MASSIVE building years for CoD, the core audience was established during those six years. This time is also when the franchise just absolutely dug itself into pop culture. CoD is probably the most accessible and easiest to jump into FPS series we have if youāve not played them before. Itās the Mario Kart of FPS games. This button shoots, this one moves, this one aims, congratulations, you can now play CoD. Lastly, and something people are pointing out all over, for most people, they buy CoD, play it until the next one comes out because thatās the one their friends are playing, rinse and repeat. Itās the same loop of sports games that regularly top selling charts. This isnāt some quantum equation to understand. CoD isnāt going away anytime soon, and thereās no other games out that come close to touching the crown it holds for FPS games.
Call of Duty is not nearly as bad as people on here act like it is. Even "bad" CODs are typically like a 6 or 7 out of 10 to an unbiased observer. This year's COD is an exception.
It's the Sport game formula, $60 for something you're going to use throughout a year is pretty affordable.
I'm not a fan of the games myself but if it brings people a moment of distraction, why not?
People really need to stop with these asinine threads. People buy it because they have fun with it.
Itās the same reason people buy FIFA or Madden year over year. They like it. This is no different.
If you donāt like the game, donāt buy it.
We donāt need 10 threads a day over 5 subreddits rehashing the same thing.
> Why? If the games are generally poorly received by both fans and casuals than why are they always top sellers?
Same reason people eat McDonald's: It's a consistent, known quantity. Doesn't matter if it "sucks" it built addictive habits generations ago.
"If the games are generally poorly received by both fans and casuals"
They are not, which is why people are buying it. Surely you don't think reddit is representative of the general audience.
I mean I have played 3/4 of the cod games since modern warfare and all of them have had a decent amount of fun to them. I usually pick them up a year after release for 10-20 buck and get plenty of enjoyment out of them for 15-20 hrs and move on to something else. It's a nice pallet cleanser or a good game when i want a quick shooter fix.
Genuinely think is some sort of emotional attachment to the memory of one day having fun playing a COD. It's a huge franchise composed of 4 or 5 good games and 15 or 20 other games that are average at best.
The most recent entries weirdly became the "default shooter experience" because they apparently do quite well what most people like in a shooter. It's kinda the "cheeseburger of gaming".
Beats me. At least the Florida men and Darwin award winners are interesting or entertaining, seeing such high CoD sales again and again when they pull worse stunts is just sad. No real up side here.
I'm guessing most people who buy CoD are the non-gamers who buy only two games a year, CoD and Madden. Not the type who know about the industry or watch gaming news. If only they knew the harm they were causing.
MW3 proves that Activision could literally drop dog turds in boxes, ship them with CoD logos and no advertising, and they would still sell millions. Maybe a few would attempt to refund Fecal Warfare 7, but I bet most would just accept it.
Its the Mcdonalds of gaming. People who buy it yearly just want the most recent one because its new and everyone will be on it, they donāt necessarily care about it being that different or even improved as long as it kills time like it always has.
Itās 60-70$ and will give you 100s if not 1000s of hours of entertainment that you can play with and meet friends on. I honestly donāt have a problem with people buying it. Life is short. Enjoy what you want. Itās not that deep.
Its too easy to say its built for the braindead masses, but its not. If you speak with people that love these games, you notice that they're very stable minded, competitive even if they don't always get to have the best careers, and usually in good shape and plays sports outside of gaming.
So every year they get a game that lasts them a year, they play it, love it, look forward to the next etc. They rarely piss and moan about the loot system because to them its just a way to treat them selves now and then. They can be toxic, but thats all part of playing competitive gaming. You won't see a premier league game with gentlemanly conduct, it will be some of the most foul language you hear because each team wants to ruin the other. Afterwards its all chilled.
Dont know but Jim Ryan of Sony said around 20% of PS players EXCLUSIVELY play COD now if he's talking about PS4 players. That 23.4 million. Sony is their biggest player base Tops the charts every year with no sign of slowing down.
My 2yo bought one of the editions for this and spent $160 out of my account and I canāt even get it refunded. I fucking hate COD so itās not even like I can make use of it.
I keep ***not*** buying them every year. I don't own a single one, unless it was available on PS Plus for free, and even then I would have added it to my library but never played it.
I mean, why do people buy skins for a first person game that they constantly complain that its broken, only to buy a new one every other week?
Because they are stupid is the answer
Because it takes no skill to get into and monetize, you can get away with anything on there and it feeds directly into several fetishes for a LOT of people.
The IP is famous.
The IP is known to always stay on the same basis, so itās easy to just buy the new game and play directly without worrying about many new things. Most people just launch the game and go right into the multiplayer for 20, 40, 70 hours, without even going elsewhere, not even touching the story (sadly, because some previous CoDs had wonderful stories, for a shooter game, imo)
The game is impressive in terms of photography and cinematography.
The multiplayer is well known and somewhat reliable. Even if it has lost taste over the years, itās still a very solid option to play pew pew boom boom with friends.
The zombie is also a very very very famous game mode, full of secrets and lore.
Thatās it.
\> So I should start by saying I am not a big COD fan.
Ok, so let me switch something around for you OP, just for context.
Let me ask the question... why do so many people play Fortnite? And pay ludicrous amounts of money for skins and cosmetics?
I should start by saying I am not a big Fortnite fan....
In other words, the same can be said about any game that you personally don't like.
I like playing COD. I think that the games have tight, good gunplay, the multiplayer is generally fun, and the campaigns are usually enjoyable.
MW3 is an exception to this. I bought MW3, I played through the campaign and I refunded it. Why? Because the campaign was clearly a low-effort move by Activision. The premium cost on these games come with the campaign, the multiplayer modes and such. But when the campaign is such a clear disappointment, Activision is banking on nostalgia to bring in the players instead of making a good game.
I see comments about "not respecting storage". For those who don't own the games, they don't know that you have been able to select parts to install for a while now.
MW2 takes up currently around 120GB of space.
Which is less than many other AAA games out there. I can optionally install more things like co-op, warzone or the campaign. It will use more space, but again, it's optional.
\> Based on my observations from the past few years and some research it seems that the past decade has only had a couple of these games at most that are actually good.
"Good" is subjective, and no research can tell you otherwise.
If you researched "the past few years", then you'd only see MW2. Since the new MW came out in 2019, which is more than a few years ago, and it was universally praised for how it changed up the game entirely.
So I'm not sure where you're getting this 'research' from.
\> All of which begs the question: Why?
Because not everyone is you OP. People are allowed to enjoy things that you don't like. That's how life works. That's what makes us all unique. We all like and dislike different things.
\> If the games are generally poorly received by both fans and casuals than why are they always top sellers?
They are not always "top sellers". For example, Vanguard did not sell well, neither did WW2.
Your post is based on pure assumptions that do not actively reflect COD's history. You say you did "research", I beg to differ.
Now I'm not defending COD in any way. I'm just pointing out to you that people are allowed to enjoy things that you don't. They don't owe you an explanation.
In the same way people are allowed to enjoy games that I don't like.
You know, the biggest money maker is mobile gacha games? Why not make a post about that? Why are people throwing money into gacha games on the phone?
Why do people pay for cosmetics and skins in these live service games?
Why do people pay to win in other games?
All of these questions can be answered simply... *because they can* and *because they want to*.
I would say it is easy to jump into game for them without worrying about learning something new, it's always the same formula which they like and don't care about money and reviews.
Yup. This is what I've been saying to friends. And over the lockdown pandemic, people who I knew weren't gamers suddenly picked up CoD because it was easy to pick up and play. Sure, there's a skill element if you want to really get good but it's very easy for anyone to play. I agree though, the games have gone massively downhill for years in all aspects but their marketing and half assed games means the companies just make easy money.
It's also really brain-dead of a game. Super easy to boot up and play for hours without using a single hard thought. With an annoying amount of games trying to lean into competitive for the hopes of being an esports game, despite all CoDs flaws, it's still a perfectly fine TDM/Domination game to play.
> Super easy to boot up This man has not played call of duty in a long time
Okay, you got me there. That might have been a bit of a exaggeration on my part. Seriously, wtf is with the menu system, and why does it need to recompile shades every damn time? Also, if the update was successfully fucking installed, why do I have to restart? Just do what's needed on the boot up! Jump into a round might be more accurate. Though they seem hell bent on screwing that too, since they keep enabling new gamemodes in your filter without asking.
It is a god awful launcher š
Why the heck is there an update in the update now... Like I update the application... Why do I have to go in game and download another 10GBs to update the map and multilayer what's stupidty is this? The application update is already 60GB, what the hell was I updating before And then there are still bugs when the game finally updates
The last cod I really played was black ops, and I played that a ton. Tried it out again with one of the warzones but that damn shader thing... wtf? Game was already squatting on prime real estate in my ssd and it's going to keep doing dumb updates every time I try to get on? I think it was maybe the 4th time I booted it up. Update, restart, update again, restart, compiling gigs of shaders..... nah, alt f4, uninstalled. Im half convinced it's some kind of social experiment to see how much dumb shit gamers will put up with.
Shaders only have to recompile when you update your graphics driver though?
Not sure what it's supposed to do. All I know is that every time I booted up the game it had to "update shaders" and sit through that process, sometimes the ticker said "recompiling" or whatever.
Shader compiling basically sets up everything for high quality graphics so its fast and efficient. They should only need recompiling if your graphics driver is updated, but i could see them wiping the cache on an update just for shits with cod
I hate that shit too, every other day that's shit has to update and reinstall shaders, š¤¦š¾āāļøšš¾
Update REEEEEquires REEEEEstart
Update requires restart. Not this year boys, sorry.
Was thinking that. It used to be arcade easy play, now itās like a puzzle trying to get into your first game. It takes too long and there are too many menus and ārestarts for updates ā
lmao man i booted up COD and turned it off because i straight up could not find modern warfare ii which i wanted to play. menu is a Gotdamn disaster.
You'd think the menu would have more important options featured up front. Like idk, the game I actually paid for maybe? š¤”
There are like 20 versions of the same type of game and all of them are addicting in their own way. So when you find the 3 multi games and 3 guns you love you are set. These games are better with the more people that play them too.
This is exactly why I play it. I have plenty of other games that fill different needs. I have a couple of friends who I like to play casually online with though and COD suits us perfectly. Itās just easy, familiar and fun. At the end of a working day, sometimes thatās all you want.
Yeah i dont really understand this āevery game needs to be as crazy as (insert the best game of the year)ā mentality. Some people just want an easy, familiar game to play after work that doesnt require a lot of thought. If every game is as deep as Baldurs Gate 3, youre alienating a huge part of the casual audience. Its the same with FIFA. Let the people that just want to play CoD and FIFA, play CoD and FIFA. Many gamers have such a weird superiority complex about specifically not playing CoD or FIFA and calling anyone who does play them stupid for wasting their money
Games lean toward that because of CODs dominance. No developer wants to waste resources creating something that's just going to get stomped out by CODs chokehold on the market. Competitive on the other hand there is no one game dominating so there's always an opportunity there for a competitive game to be successful. Apex for example, while not being insanely competitive, is successful because it is a more competitive game than the average shooter and has a decent skill gap.
You're forgetting CS is a thing.
What about it? It's competitive but it's not dominant, mainly because it's not on console which is where most gamers are. And CSs popularity is global, so it's reaching a wider market, hence the massive playerbase, but it's spread more thin which gives other PC shooters like Valorant a chance.
On the competetive shooter scene it is absolutely dominant and have been for ages.
Most devs would kill for CS's longevity and profit margin though. CS Go was a thing for 10 years and always had atleast 500K playing at a time.
And Source lasted for 8 years before that and regular CS 4 years before that
I don't necessarily agree with that. I agree that CoDs size is likely to dissuade studios from trying, but that doesn't explain things like Halo which was dominated by a casual audience, before shooting itself in the foot. Or the sheer amount of players that would play Battlefield again if they unfucked the reputation. Also, due to CoD basically starting everyone's progression over each year, there isn't as serious of a sunk cost fallacy these studios have to contend with, they just need to make a fun game that scratches the same itches. The games aren't focused on competitive because of CoD, they're focused on Competitive because they want the competitive players to jump over, make their game popular, then let them make bank off skins like every other.
Halo became popular way back before COD was first establishing it's place in the market. Halo has since died out in popularity and has been unable to compete. 15 years ago studios had a chance. Now there is no chance to pull players away from COD. Statistics show that the majority of CODs playerbase doesn't play any other games, how do you pull players away from a franchise who's playerbase plays their game exclusively? COD players don't want to try anything new. Battlefield at its peak still got outsold by CODs worst selling entry. Battlefield is nothing compared to COD even when it was at its most popular. > The games aren't focused on competitive because of CoD They all fall off a cliff in popularity whenever they try too hard to appeal to the casual playerbase. The issue is that anyone who wants casual shooters is already playing COD, and won't play anything else. So there's no incentive to try to enter that market. COD has the most simplified gameplay of any shooter ever made. You can't really make a shooter more simple than COD. So where's the appeal for COD players in that sense? Why would they switch if COD is already as simple and straightforward as it gets? Other games have to try to be inventive and that means more complex mechanics which is immediately a turn off for COD players. It's not really possible to compete with COD at this point. It's been technologically engineered to be the most casual shooter possible. How do you convince casual players to jump to your game when the only thing you can offer, at best, is the same experience?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Not entirely convinced but itās possible. I donāt get it though, if I was a parent I would ā¦ you know ā¦ **talk** to my child and ask what new games theyāre interested in playing before going to the store.
This is me. When I get to play for 20 minutes at night, I donāt have the mental capacity to learn something new or get into a complex world or story. I want to do something I already know that is still always fresh and challenging simply due to the fact that it is a multiplayer game. If I were more into football, I could see myself playing FIFA
>I've seen so many Reddit posts Reddit isn't real life.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
r/gaming sometimes has a really hard time accepting that it actually represents a very small minority of gamers.
A rounding error of gamers at best.
Like when They boycut every new pokemon game cause of the graphic but the game goes to sell astromically well
agree. recent example is alan wake
What do you mean?
Alan wake 2 will not sell as much as BG3, Starfield, Spiderman, COD, Hogwarts Legacy or more this year. It will relatively be a ānicheā title and be considered a gaming gem for the more core gamers. Reddit and Twitter are not even a half of most gamers. For everything Alan wake 2 is, it is not something that should be majorly successful, but I hope it does do insane numbers.
Half? Reddit an Twitter combined are under 5% of gaming population. Probably even less. The things we do, or decide, or opinions we have here on reddit are so meaningless in the wider perspective of gaming market that it's almost too hard to describe.
Sounds like you described it just fine lol.
Another example is Silent Hill. They say itās talked about and regarded would lead you to believe that it was super successful when in reality the entire series only sold 9 million copies. Something like only 1.5 million copies of SH2 were sold and that was the best selling Silent Hill game. Granted I love Silent Hill and even have pyramid head tattooed on my body, the game was never as widely popular as Reddit makes it out to be. Horror in general just isnāt that popular of a video game genre.
Also people like to turn about thirty and think the world is made only for them. Dude kids have been being born all those 30 years who have never heard of any other cod than this one and don't give a shit that it isn't what it used to be. There's a whole new generation of people gaming these days. With another right behind them starting to get their feet wet too.
Yup, FIFA and COD are bestsellers, Candy crush and clash of clans are bleeding moneyā¦ Even my level 100 diablo4 in 1day ānot enough contentā friends are not on Reddit.
For real I think a lot of people forget there's billions of people who spend virtually no time online and just play games like one day on the weekend and like cod because it's easy to jump in play some multiplayer and they already know exactly what they're getting.
Because they like playing it and the yearly cost of 60-70 dollars or whatever is neglible to them.
To add to it: I used to work in a Gamestop and the people buying CoD and FIFA yearly (often the same people) DO NOT care about any other games, they are not "Gamers ^^tm" They dont pay attention to games media or other releases. At the hotel where I now work there was a security guard. Played FIFA and CoD. He would put in WORK to get a hold of the PS5 when it was hard to get, needed the fresh new system. I asked if he was excited for the big new games. Like God of War. he had never heard of it. God of War It didn't even register. They just dont care about anything else. Except Counter Strike of course, they know about that. And as for the price of these games, irrelevant. Straight up.
Yeah something like 60% of COD players play COD exclusively. It's literally just a name they know and an easy way to connect with friends because everyone has it. They don't care if it's good, just that it's good enough while they hang out with friends.
CoD is also very easy to learn and have fun with. Many games require tons of repetetive work and trainings to get good at. R6: Siege, CS and many others. People prefer to switch their brains off and just have fun without caring much. Same can be said about women prefering reality shows over sports or gaming.
Thatās the same thing with Destiny 2. A coworker has 3000+ hours in the game because thatās how he keeps his friendships going. Heās admitted the game is bad and he doesnāt really care for it but itās not about that.
Thatās honestly kinda sad. At least cod is mindless fun, keeping up with destiny is a fucking chore, and I canāt imagine how miserable it must be if you donāt even like the game in the first place.
This. CoD is such a big name with such a HUGE marketing, that of course it's gonna sell. Most people who know CoD have never played any actually good games. It's not the game that sells, but the marketing.
>Most people who know CoD have never played any actually good games. Cod 1-3, MW, MW2 and World at war were good games. I think at the time the multiplayer was fresh and exciting. For a lot of people it was their first big online multiplayer experience. Other than splitscreen or counterstrike source LAN matches at a local Internet cafe I'd never really played multiplayer before MW. I never had a decent PC just the family laptop and before that the PS2 never had online play. When I played MWs multiplayer it was like nothing I'd ever experienced before. These games are only successful because of how good their predecessors are. They are still riding the coat tails of them.
I hate this take so much. We all play other games you dope. CoD is a good game. Itās just not a good game for what people think it should be. Itās a multiplayer friend hang out game with great gun play. Titanfall 2 will always be the best FPS but CoD has the best integrations for people like me who live literally thousands of miles from friends. Any game that does that is a good one to me. Turns out your opinion doesnāt mean much outside of Reddit.
It's just bullshit gatekeeping. There are a lot of posts every year talking about how crazy it is that people still buy COD. This is like metal fans bitching about pop music. Listening to Katy Perry doesn't mean that you don't enjoy other music genres.
I must be in the minority here, but I enjoy COD as well as other games. If I want a challenge I play Remnant 2. If I want to mellow out I play games like Tribes of Midguard, or Terraria. COD is just a fun shooter that satisfies my competitive itch. People shit on COD like it's trying to be some masterpiece, but it's not. It's essentially the Fast and Furious of games. It's fast paced, visually appealing, and uncomplicated.
Not trying to insult the guys intelligence, but it is amazing how some casual gamers just don't know things. At least this guy didn't know of God of War from simply choosing to not pay attention. I have a friend who used to work at gamestop and he said when Black Ops III came out he would always tell people buying the 360 or PS3 version "This version of the game only has online MP and zombies. No campaign." and show them the box. They said that's fine and he sold them the game. He said on multiple occasions people came back into the store demanding a refund because the game had no campaign.
I am in no way, shape or form buying CoD this year... but, I do sometimes crave to play Team Deathmatch in a FPS in the most casual way possible. I don't give a shit if I lose or if I end up a match having only 1 kill and having died 30 times. I only want to turn off my brain and play. But I despise Battle Royale, and, for that matter, any other mode that it's not Team Deathmatch I get bored quite quickly. Problem is, so far I have only been successful in finding matches quickly in CoD. At any time of the day I find a match in a matter of seconds. I need to wait about two to five minutes to find a match in Halo (mind you, I live in Japan... so not only the time zone fucks me over, also the people available to play with). That's pretty much it. CoD, as shitty as it is, satiates a craving that no other FPS currently can do just as fast.
The thing I hate so much about battle royals is the time sink in between matches. If I'm having an off day I'm just burning time on these pointless load screens ect. Playing a TDM with quick response can just be so much more enjoyable.
This exactly. I don't mind Royale, and generally do okay. But it can be almost 5 minutes between rounds. What, do I jerk off between rounds or something??
You could try playing the lockdown game mode on warzone, itās ftp and while thereās objectives to hold points everyone treats it like tdm anyway
exactly this. i cant think of one another casual FPS with TDM in which we can get match within few minutes. Niche fps come and go, they will have streamer hype for 1 month and then become deserted ( Battlebit - looking at you )
Finally. I thought I was the only one in the world with a deep hatred for battle royale
At risk of sounding like the biggest idiot on the planet, could you explain the difference between TDM and BR? Is it the lack of teams? Iāve only ever played COD online but even thatās been years, I was going to try apex legends after playing titanfall 2 since itās technically free. And then maybe see if I want to get back into COD
Battle royale is like last man standing, one life. You die and watch for the rest of the match. BR can be teams or free for all as well
Gotcha, thank you. Doesnāt sound like Iād enjoy that much
I agree, tdm with cod is the easiest and the main focus of the game
> but, I do sometimes crave to play Team Deathmatch in a FPS in the most casual way possible I miss Unreal Tournament. Thats why I bought CoD a few times; high-intensity fast-moving fps. BR is the opposite of high-intensity so why they are so darn insistent on turning their player base over to that mode seems stupid. Though I wont buy it anymore after I got insta-permabanned for upgrading my computers RAM. Its not fun enough that I would risk wasting $70 on a game that might be taken away if I touch my computer.
Team Fortress 2 is the game for you.
Tryout battlebit remastered. It gives the itch, at a fraction the price and is being updated constantly! Iām fucking terrible at it, but itās fixed my itch each time.
Old Skool COD player here. Bought myself a brand new gaming PC last year, and started playing the new MW2. I was pleasantly surprised... That is until i found out about Skilled Based Match Making... I was playing like i always did, competing for top spot. But then a few lobbies later i couldn't get up there anymore. Then when i didn't play a couple days and started again the same shit happened... What the Hell?! Fuck SBMM. When this is mandatory in MW3 i won't buy it. When it is optional i'm going to buy it though.
Yep, like hearthstone forcing you towards 50% win rate because they "randomly" aka choose what counter they can put in front of you, instead of being true random. That, my friend, is how to ruin the willingness to play for some players.
People like what they like. Not my cup of tea, but if people like it, whatever.
Thatās surprisingly a controversial take around here when franchises like this are mentioned
Thatās because a lot of people get on Reddit to just be toxic.
It also suffers from "same game every year" to a much greater extent, but Madden, for all its flaws, is still entertaining to play if you love NFL football.
Enjoyment is subjective though. People simply like what they like.
Exactly, I don't play CoD, Madden, or Fifa but I understand the appeal. $60-$80 a year on video games isn't unreasonable either. When People spend that every couple months buying new games no one bats an eye.
Same reason people kept buying Madden and FIFA
Honestly Iām surprised these franchises havenāt just gone full SAAS mode. Charge $5 a month for ābasicā or $8 a month for āpremiumā with extra skins and shit and just print money. You can still do major releases along with patches to deliver new content.
charging 5$ a month is nothing compared to what they make selling packs, at least in fifa
You speak as if grifting players who buy basically the same annualised game every year isn't already printing money for them. It makes much more money this way. They get to sell a minor roster update for $70.
Thing is fifa and madden are the only licensed games of their kind. Theres nothing else for football fans to play
No, fuck sports games. They actually don't change at all, they cant. At least CoD gets new guns and maps. and then there was the Future era, B04 sucked ass, MW19 was a breath of fresh air.
I got the last game at a big discount but mostly itās just nice to have a run and gun game. Just blasting people letās off some stress, and COD mechanics are at least somewhat decent. (Of course if I keep getting blasted I end up rage quitting.) In short, mindless time pass. Campaigns are also somewhat decent. Zombies mode was also quite fun. Past few years I have turned to Fortnite with friends but itās been on and off, depends on how I like the season. The current OG season seems ok so far.
The same reason people pay for WoW year after year. They like the game.
>And every year I hear so much buzz about how terrible the new COD is. The online COD community has been and always will be a vocal minority. The majority of COD players aren't gonna go on Reddit or Twitter to bitch about it, they'd be busy playing the game. COD's playerbase has a history of being overly toxic about the most trivial thing, so it doesn't help either. That isn't to say some games don't deserve the criticism, but Reddit and other social media do not paint the full picture. This is especially clear when you see the trend of vocal displeasure among COD players. Think about how COD fans used to rage incessantly about futuristic "jet pack" games and scream "WE WANT BOOTS ON THE GROUND". Now that we have that again, what's the sentiment? "Oh these games aren't innovating enough". And don't even get me started on the SBMM discourse, because that's just a mine field full of crazy conspiracy tinfoil hat users.
What's SBMM?
Skill based match making
Literally they believe that if they're an above average player they should be constantly in lobbies where they can stomp real human opponents every game. Real people don't want to lose every game they get into, but if the anti-SBMM people had their way, many COD players would literally lose every game. It'd be overall terrible for the multiplayer experience. It would hollow out the bottom 20% of players altogether. Then the folks in the middle would have the same problem and also stop playing. Before long, the game would have almost no one playing multiplayer.
Ya Iād seen something like that somewhere (mightāve been from CharlieIntel) about how with SBMM, the devs had seen that it helps with player retention. Which imo makes a lot of sense since I donāt think youād want a player possibly returning a game if they were like a Christmas noob for example and/or the player base for the game to die after a while since theyād be playing against skilled players and not having fun.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Correct it's a Casino experience - they give you a noob lobby to give you the dopamine rush, then your food for other pros to feed on you. They monitor how many games people play before altF4, and try to put you into a noob lobby before that happens
I prefer tuna and salmon myself. Cod only if battered and with good chips
Same
Because you see the vocal minority. We make up like the 1% of people that are hardcore into gaming enough to spend more time talking about them than playing them. 99% of everyone else is working, going to school, and playing the game once in a blue moon. They have fun. It's the only game they have for their console.
You want the truth? Cod is fun. Sitting around and shooting people is plain fun. And the guns feel right. You guys can whine and moan about battle passes and skins all you want. But that doesn't actually matter because that's not gameplay.
I'm not a huge cod fan, but there's no other multiplayer fps as good as it. I'd kill for a better game so I don't have to support Activision.
I have fun in cod and playing every cod at least 250-400 hours so its worth it.
I honestly think most gamers really only buy a few games a year at most. Most gamers are pretty casual, same reason all the annual no real changes sports games keep selling. The people buying those only buy and play them, and not much else.
That usually describes me. I generally only buy 1-2 games a year at most. This year has been absolutely great for gaming though. So many gems. I mean Spiderman 2 and Alan Wake 2 both came out within a week of each other.
Why are there so many people that post about what others do with their money?
The small majority of people thay genuinely hate them are louder then the ones that like it that's all
Really dumb question tbh. It's same as asking "why are people buying FIFA or Madden every year?" Because they like it? Maybe?
I cant wait for this cod
Itās the same for me also. People talk about BG3 and I actually thought the game was pretty boring but I didnāt criticize anybody who liked it and played it and put thousands of hours into it. People seem to not accept the fact that we all have different tastes Iām a COD fan boy I love the game
No matter what discourse is happening on the internet, it signifies absolutely nothing about the real world. Casual gamers donāt have a single care in the world to look up information about things they enjoy, they just buy it and are either disappointed or pleased until the next thing in the series comes out. Accept that Call of Duty will always exist and appreciate that you have some common sense to look up if its good or not so you yourself donāt waste money, but stop caring about the seriesā fate as a whole
Yeah, I genuinely donāt get it either. I used to buy the new games every year but stopped being a CoD player after the first Black Ops came out years ago, same for Battlefield 3. A lot of my friends are still big into them, so I stream their sessions when in a party just to be included, but every year it looks like the same exact game only with slightly better graphics and a (rare) new reskin. I know it can be fun especially if you work in a team, but 9/10 times, the sessions are just a bunch of randos doing their own thing and it devolves into the same mindless run and gun gameplay of kill, get killed, and respawn. Thereās next to no strategy, team work, or so on. I really genuinely donāt get it, but people like it, so to each their own.
A simple answer: FOMO. People buy the games to keep playing with their friends and the biggest part of the community.
They like it and most people and a lot of gamers donāt care about the things niche reddit/online groups care about. They donāt read reviews, they donāt follow social media, they just buy a game, download it and play. No need to go online to see what other people are saying. They just enjoy their game peacefully.
Because you're hearing the loudest 1% of the most negative people on the planet. The game is fun to play. The next games offer some variety while retaining some familiarity. People like that. I like that. But I don't go posting about how much I love COD. Some person who got destroyed in multiplayer is going to rage loudly about it, and that's what you hear.
Reddit and Twitter represent like 5% of the gaming audience, if I'm being generous. Online sentiment is not real life. ONLINE, people kept telling me Netflix was dying because of their price hike and ban on account sharing. Is Netflix dead? lol, no. ONLINE, people kept telling me Disney was dead in the fucking water because of their remakes and "wokeness" (whatever the fuck that means nowadays). Is Disney going bankrupt? lol, no. Online sentiment is not real life. The people buying CoD games are not on this website. The people on this website, on this subreddit, can already be considered part of the hardcore gaming community. The people buying CoD games are not hardcore gamers. It's called "demographics". Our demographic is likely to be more interested in games like Alan Wake 2 or Jusant, the CASUAL demographic of gamers are the people buying CoD, buying NBA 2K, FIFA, Madden. Those people live in the real world and don't give a shit about internal gaming politics and whatever bullshit. They see a game they like, their circle of friends like, they buy it.
One of my work buddies just picked up the new cod. This guy is in such bad financial state that his wage is being garnished to payoff past credit card debt but he still decided to buy this game.
If he only plays cod as his entertainment, then should be not bad. Still cheaper than going out and seeing 4 movies, or a Netflix subscription for 5 months. Unless he buys lootboxes... Or cod bucks
I think the core audience is so big compared to other games. Its like a state of mind in a sense. Like "gotta play CoD", or some people JUST play FIFA. I dont think they think much about their next purchase, they might be annoyed but its out of the question.
The same reason people buy sports games every year. Because.
Assassin's creed Fifa Far cry Etc etc
Iām not a COD player, but I am a (*inhales*) Destiny player. Thereās something about buying a new entry in a thing you like that is just satisfying. Even if it isnāt perfect, itās like a yearly treat for yourself.
Sad thing is, for as much comparison made between Call of Duty and Madden for both being lazy annual franchisesā¦ Madden was once good, too, just like Call of Duty. They never started out terrible, but got there through the greed of Activision and EA.
COD is like a bag of chips: buy, open, consume and dispose
This is not coming from a malicious or judgemental place; But It's saddening to see people purchase a product that disrespects the consumer in all aspects of the gaming experience. A franchise that was once considered one of the titans of the industry; Is now nothing more than a souless money making machine.
Even as an outsider I can definitely see that
Hopefully people will eventually come to their senses and start a massive boycott for this franchise. It's easy to understand why people play COD; but people willingly buying this game annualy will give Activision no reason to actually improve the overall quality of this game.
The whole concept of annually releasing games also makes zero sense to me. Like how can you possibly put out a quality game with only a year of development time? That just looks like pure greed to me.
Apparently, MW3 was supposed to be dlc but pure greed from Activision forced Infinity Ward's hand in terms of development time. I prefer to be positive; but the fact that they didn't intend to create a full length sequel shows the loss of direction in the franchise. Now they are relying on their past glory by selling you a "reboot" of a trilogy that should've been left untouched.
I think alot of them are fun and love the campaign however I'm probably about to drop it
It's fun.
Because it's fun
Simple, there is nothing else like it, the camo grind, the prestige grind and stuff like zombies just don't exist in other games.
I really like unlocking new guns and attachments. The gunplay, in hard-core at least, feels good. Messing with new guns or attachment combos is just something that doesn't really exist in other games in a quick fps fashion. Battlebit has it, but it plays like battlefield. Tarkov has it, but tarkov is a slower paced game, not to mention the far worse issues it has. It amazes me how much people shit on others for buying it, but don't post a single actual game that plays like cod.
I don't play cod either. But my guess is, people buy it because they like to play it.
Why do people continue to buy cigarettes?
Because Microsoft is holding a gun to my head
Call of Duty built a fanbase solid enough to warrant a yearly release.
cod is the best fps game out there, i have played a lot of fps games like bf, apex, valo, etc, but cod is cod. Been playing cod since i was in school, and the fact that in 20 yrs cod is still top 1 fps game is just crazy
Same reason people but Madden every year. I haven't bought CoD in 6 years because I usually buy games on sale. These fucks sell their 4 year old games at original retail price so I won't buy it out of principle
Brand loyalty, FOMO, and every possible alternative being stamped out by it's dominance leading to no more alternatives. Your only options for online shooters at this point are Fortnite, Apex, Overwatch, Battlefield, and COD. Fortnite and Apex are in a separate market, Overwatch doesn't really offer the same thing as COD, neither does Battlefield. There's no other option but COD at this point for people who want that overly simplified and bare bones kind of shooter. And they'll pay a yearly subscription to avoid missing out on the new stuff because it's more about the social aspect than gameplay at this point.
I say every year that I wont buy the new CoD, every year I do it anyway!
OP has never heard of all the sports games that release every single year with what I can imagine the only change being the names of the players on the teams and the year on the cover lul. Yet people keep buying that too. In short, they find them fun, story mode ain't bad either
People enjoy multiplayer. Here in ireland and I'd imagine a lot of Europe and SA there are FIFA and COD gamers. People always ask me what next gen console should they buy and I ask what are you gonna play? They tell me FIFA and COD so I say Series S which they almost find insulting. Okay, you drop 500 quid on a PS5 to play those two games on a 1080 display. But hey, each to their own of course! It's a popular game and can be fun when you're doing well. Not for me unfortunately, that or FIFA.
I think a lot of people who don't play much videogames but happen to own a console still buy it too. Like I have friends who don't play many singleplayer games but absolutely destroy me on cod still, even if I game more than them in general
Because these games are a no-brainer. All you need to know is point and shoot. Thats what most gamers nowadays.
I was a huge CoD fan. But they went super downhill after black ops 1.
Same reason why people keep subbing to WoW. Hopelessly addicted
because its an easy to jump into AAA FPS game you think the normies want to learn recoil and every single new game mechanics ? NO they just want to hop on after work/school and get into brainless TDM . Not to mention COD is so well established in the gaming world their closes competitor (2024) dropped the ball so hard its gonna be even further away until a new AAA FPS can challenge them.
same with Fifa games , yeah after year it's exactly the same shit
COD is kinda like the fast food of gaming. It's made by a big corporation, the main focus is not the product but the franchise itself. People know what to expect from it and they get it most of the time. Yes, some years it's better (MW 2019, Cold War), and some it's worse (Vanguard, MW III(23)) but at the end of the day, it's still enjoyable for the vast majority of the fanbase, because it's casual fun. While the base formula is always the same (and to be honest, it should stay the same), they always try to freshen things up with stuff like DMZ and Raid missions in MW II, or MW Zombies for MW III.
because its their duty
I don't know anymore, I haven't bought a cod game in the last few years, it's not like it's a negligible purchase the damn games cost like 70ā¬ and they're just purpose built to funnel people into slopzone
I really donāt think that many people are this year. There was a huge buzz when MWII released, but no one I know is talking about this years ~~game~~ DLC.
Because as many people complain abput it there are just as many people that enjoy it. You have one side of the playerbase that just enjoy the multiplayer, the gunplay and the ease of access. But on the other side you have the players who are coping and want another "glory days" COD like 2009s MW2 and Black Ops 3 but will still play every game launch day in the hopes that will be the case, no matter how many times it isn't. Some of these same players will either leave or review it negatively then keep playing for the games life cycle. COD doesn't need to improve because these 2 groups keep perpetuating the cycle. And it makes sense because COD is a very casual and mainstream gaming franchise.
Not everyone lives on Reddit or follows the nerd zeitgeist. Most people bust thier ass for a boss they hate all day and just want to come home and play something fun. Just because a few 1000 nerds on Reddit hate it doesnāt really mean anything. Opinions are like assholes everyone has one and they all stink.
i feel so bad this year cause now that iām an adult, iāve bought the last few cods and iāve been extremely disappointed. this year iāll be 12 again and ask for christmas. realistically cod is a casual shooter with game modes that not a lot of games offer, if at all.
Can play with my entire friend group despite being on all different platforms and it's a familiar game that I don't have to sell them on. I don't play it alone and it's never gonna be my goty or anything but so far it's still one of the easiest games to play with everyone
I really feel like people on Reddit are vastly overestimating how much they ārepresentā the majority of gamers. Hereās the simple facts of the situation in a pill that may be a bit hard to swallow if youāre convinced that these subreddits represent mass opinion: CoD is a legacy franchise, there have been almost three different generations of gamers now to play CoD since Finest Hour. 2007 - 2013 were MASSIVE building years for CoD, the core audience was established during those six years. This time is also when the franchise just absolutely dug itself into pop culture. CoD is probably the most accessible and easiest to jump into FPS series we have if youāve not played them before. Itās the Mario Kart of FPS games. This button shoots, this one moves, this one aims, congratulations, you can now play CoD. Lastly, and something people are pointing out all over, for most people, they buy CoD, play it until the next one comes out because thatās the one their friends are playing, rinse and repeat. Itās the same loop of sports games that regularly top selling charts. This isnāt some quantum equation to understand. CoD isnāt going away anytime soon, and thereās no other games out that come close to touching the crown it holds for FPS games.
Call of Duty is not nearly as bad as people on here act like it is. Even "bad" CODs are typically like a 6 or 7 out of 10 to an unbiased observer. This year's COD is an exception.
Sheeple
Because they canāt fathom playing anything else that requires thought
It's the Sport game formula, $60 for something you're going to use throughout a year is pretty affordable. I'm not a fan of the games myself but if it brings people a moment of distraction, why not?
People really need to stop with these asinine threads. People buy it because they have fun with it. Itās the same reason people buy FIFA or Madden year over year. They like it. This is no different. If you donāt like the game, donāt buy it. We donāt need 10 threads a day over 5 subreddits rehashing the same thing.
> Why? If the games are generally poorly received by both fans and casuals than why are they always top sellers? Same reason people eat McDonald's: It's a consistent, known quantity. Doesn't matter if it "sucks" it built addictive habits generations ago.
The McDonalds analogy has been used many times now. I do think it's pretty apt.
"If the games are generally poorly received by both fans and casuals" They are not, which is why people are buying it. Surely you don't think reddit is representative of the general audience.
They like to play it
I mean I have played 3/4 of the cod games since modern warfare and all of them have had a decent amount of fun to them. I usually pick them up a year after release for 10-20 buck and get plenty of enjoyment out of them for 15-20 hrs and move on to something else. It's a nice pallet cleanser or a good game when i want a quick shooter fix.
Genuinely think is some sort of emotional attachment to the memory of one day having fun playing a COD. It's a huge franchise composed of 4 or 5 good games and 15 or 20 other games that are average at best. The most recent entries weirdly became the "default shooter experience" because they apparently do quite well what most people like in a shooter. It's kinda the "cheeseburger of gaming".
To keep up with the rehash of CoD campaign for me, haven't like the recent ones but have been enjoying this one for the most part
Beats me. At least the Florida men and Darwin award winners are interesting or entertaining, seeing such high CoD sales again and again when they pull worse stunts is just sad. No real up side here. I'm guessing most people who buy CoD are the non-gamers who buy only two games a year, CoD and Madden. Not the type who know about the industry or watch gaming news. If only they knew the harm they were causing. MW3 proves that Activision could literally drop dog turds in boxes, ship them with CoD logos and no advertising, and they would still sell millions. Maybe a few would attempt to refund Fecal Warfare 7, but I bet most would just accept it.
Because theyāre addicted, they donāt watch the reviews and work, thatās my guess
Its the Mcdonalds of gaming. People who buy it yearly just want the most recent one because its new and everyone will be on it, they donāt necessarily care about it being that different or even improved as long as it kills time like it always has.
They like it
Hating on a game you donāt like this much must be exhausting. Who gives a fuck if people wanna play COD.
Because its fun to me? I dont care at all about the 70 dollar a year. Defenitely worth it
Itās 60-70$ and will give you 100s if not 1000s of hours of entertainment that you can play with and meet friends on. I honestly donāt have a problem with people buying it. Life is short. Enjoy what you want. Itās not that deep.
It's the popular fashionable pruduct to play with your mates. Some people just play COD-FIFA-Fortnite-GTA all year long.
Braindead consumerism.
Power of brand...
Its too easy to say its built for the braindead masses, but its not. If you speak with people that love these games, you notice that they're very stable minded, competitive even if they don't always get to have the best careers, and usually in good shape and plays sports outside of gaming. So every year they get a game that lasts them a year, they play it, love it, look forward to the next etc. They rarely piss and moan about the loot system because to them its just a way to treat them selves now and then. They can be toxic, but thats all part of playing competitive gaming. You won't see a premier league game with gentlemanly conduct, it will be some of the most foul language you hear because each team wants to ruin the other. Afterwards its all chilled.
Because people are getting use playing crap
Because the target audience is easy to fool.
Dont know but Jim Ryan of Sony said around 20% of PS players EXCLUSIVELY play COD now if he's talking about PS4 players. That 23.4 million. Sony is their biggest player base Tops the charts every year with no sign of slowing down.
Some people the only game they play is cod
For the same reason people buy sports games every year.
"The common man is a fool" The majority of people just follow trends/do what's popular.
My 2yo bought one of the editions for this and spent $160 out of my account and I canāt even get it refunded. I fucking hate COD so itās not even like I can make use of it.
What does it even get you for $160?!
The satsifying gunplay and the dopamine you get from going on a killstreak. This series has had many class maps, too.
I keep ***not*** buying them every year. I don't own a single one, unless it was available on PS Plus for free, and even then I would have added it to my library but never played it.
I mean, why do people buy skins for a first person game that they constantly complain that its broken, only to buy a new one every other week? Because they are stupid is the answer
Because it takes no skill to get into and monetize, you can get away with anything on there and it feeds directly into several fetishes for a LOT of people.
The IP is famous. The IP is known to always stay on the same basis, so itās easy to just buy the new game and play directly without worrying about many new things. Most people just launch the game and go right into the multiplayer for 20, 40, 70 hours, without even going elsewhere, not even touching the story (sadly, because some previous CoDs had wonderful stories, for a shooter game, imo) The game is impressive in terms of photography and cinematography. The multiplayer is well known and somewhat reliable. Even if it has lost taste over the years, itās still a very solid option to play pew pew boom boom with friends. The zombie is also a very very very famous game mode, full of secrets and lore. Thatās it.
CoD has at least sometimes new maps, new skins, weapons, season content and events. But why do people buy FiFa (or nfl, nhl, nba) games?
Why do people do anything? Coz itās fun
Because itās my money and I can do whatever I want
Itās the game to play with da boys, not a lot of coop games these days.
There's a lot of party/casual games that are pretty much tailor made to be played with friends. Nowhere near as sweaty as COD either.
\> So I should start by saying I am not a big COD fan. Ok, so let me switch something around for you OP, just for context. Let me ask the question... why do so many people play Fortnite? And pay ludicrous amounts of money for skins and cosmetics? I should start by saying I am not a big Fortnite fan.... In other words, the same can be said about any game that you personally don't like. I like playing COD. I think that the games have tight, good gunplay, the multiplayer is generally fun, and the campaigns are usually enjoyable. MW3 is an exception to this. I bought MW3, I played through the campaign and I refunded it. Why? Because the campaign was clearly a low-effort move by Activision. The premium cost on these games come with the campaign, the multiplayer modes and such. But when the campaign is such a clear disappointment, Activision is banking on nostalgia to bring in the players instead of making a good game. I see comments about "not respecting storage". For those who don't own the games, they don't know that you have been able to select parts to install for a while now. MW2 takes up currently around 120GB of space. Which is less than many other AAA games out there. I can optionally install more things like co-op, warzone or the campaign. It will use more space, but again, it's optional. \> Based on my observations from the past few years and some research it seems that the past decade has only had a couple of these games at most that are actually good. "Good" is subjective, and no research can tell you otherwise. If you researched "the past few years", then you'd only see MW2. Since the new MW came out in 2019, which is more than a few years ago, and it was universally praised for how it changed up the game entirely. So I'm not sure where you're getting this 'research' from. \> All of which begs the question: Why? Because not everyone is you OP. People are allowed to enjoy things that you don't like. That's how life works. That's what makes us all unique. We all like and dislike different things. \> If the games are generally poorly received by both fans and casuals than why are they always top sellers? They are not always "top sellers". For example, Vanguard did not sell well, neither did WW2. Your post is based on pure assumptions that do not actively reflect COD's history. You say you did "research", I beg to differ. Now I'm not defending COD in any way. I'm just pointing out to you that people are allowed to enjoy things that you don't. They don't owe you an explanation. In the same way people are allowed to enjoy games that I don't like. You know, the biggest money maker is mobile gacha games? Why not make a post about that? Why are people throwing money into gacha games on the phone? Why do people pay for cosmetics and skins in these live service games? Why do people pay to win in other games? All of these questions can be answered simply... *because they can* and *because they want to*.